The Panopticon System

The Panopticon System: A Mechanism of Power

This study discusses the surveillance conducted by Five Eyes (FVEY) international intelligence alliance, and their monitoring of private and commercial communications including other data traffic. I will argue in this study the reasons for which intelligence agencies utilize the Panopticon concept of surveillance as a mechanism of power. The Panopticon structure and systematic monitoring are being used to organize society and support government power through positive analysis. Social institutions’ collection of data, from schools, hospitals, governments and corporations are used for power and control on a day to day basis. The omniscient surveillance that is present internalizes a gaze on society

The culture and norms that are abided by in everyday life create the ability of an inspection from a central hub. The Panopticon structure concept has been utilized by intelligence organizations to watch over the masses using sovereignty enforcement technologies. The mechanisms of discipline technologies are spread throughout the social body which creates a general disciplinary society (Boyne, 2000, pg 293). The central hub creates this disciplinary power and utilizes it for the normalizing gaze to classify and assess individuals within the masses. Consequently, it is a hierarchical observation that normalizes judgment in society to cause individuals to be aware of their own actions and the repercussions of those actions. This disciplinary society is coercive in creating good workers and students, as well as neutralizes the danger or problem populations. Government intelligence agencies utilize Panopticon surveillance techniques to manipulate the masses into separate individual objects of knowledge. Whether it be used for prisoners, workers, students or within society, the organizations use positive knowledge to produce its reformed subjects. As Green discusses, these surveillance

Individualization has provided the relationship between power and knowledge through the production of effective instruments for the formation and accumulation of information; such as, methods of observation, techniques of institutional registration, procedures for investigation and research, and apparatuses of control (Smart, 1982, 73). Surveillance is being done to us through multiple agents such as hospitals, schools, workplaces, and CCTV; and done by us through utilizing the internet, social devices, and other social institutions. The social solidarity from individualization has created a welfare state. Within the state, there are vulnerable groups where it is imperative to watch over and take care of them. The government has assumed the role of management, which constantly uses and develops more surveillance techniques. New intervention practices were established over families, compulsory schooling and legislation on the protection of minors for the pursuit of health and well integrated society (Boyne, 2000, pg 291). Society has inherently created a sub-panoptical surveillance through the community because there is the priority of the group over the individual; Boyne points out that these sub-Panopticals are created for a management of